Are Mermaids Real? Animal Planet Documentary Mermaids: The New Evidence

Remember this story I wrote about watching the Mermaid Body Found documentary on Animal Planet about a year ago? Well, guess what? The Discovery Channel recently aired a follow up, aptly titled Mermaids The New Evidence.

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In Mermaids: the Body Found, the Animal Planet brings us into a world where the legends of mermaids is real. While slated as a documentary, it is more realistically described as a science fiction portrayal of real-life events.

Mermaids: The Body Found blends real-life events and fairy tales with the story of two scientists who testify they found the remains of a never-before-identified sea creature. We watch as CGI creates a world where mermaids really do exist, and gives us a picture of how they may have evolved over the years.

Mermaids: The Body Found is a story about evolutionary possibility grounded in a radical scientific theory – the Aquatic Ape Theory, which claims that humans had an aquatic stage in our evolutionary past. While coastal flooding millions of years ago turned some of our ancestors inland, is it possible that one group of our ancestors didn’t retreat from water but rather went in deeper? Could they have ventured farther into sea out of necessity and to find food?

Now the Discovery Channel brings us Mermaids The New Evidence, where the former NOAA marine biologist Dr Paul Robertson, who spoke out in Mermaids The Body Found, tells us of the aftermath he encountered as a whistle blower, and how he still believes in what he told us in Mermaids The Body Found.

We're shown a video taken in Kirat Yam, Isreal, that was taken in 2009.  Someone caught a mermaid on video on the Kirat Yam coastline, and Shmuell Sisso, mayor of Kirat Yam is offering a million dollars for clear evidence of a mermaid, as he feels (rightly so) the 2009 video is not indisputable proof.

Now, of course this is all presented as fact in Mermaids The New Evidence, as a very serious documentary, but if you dig a little, you'll find that the Animal Planet executives admit that they are just trying to open a dialogue - they're not actually saying that mermaids are real.

I think the real point of Mermaids The Body Found and Mermaids The New Evidence is this: future Navy sonar testing will effect 33 million marine mammals over the next 5 years - and this is according to Navy estimates.

It seems that over the last 10 years or so, many of our beached whales have been a result of this sonar testing, and it doesn't appear that the government really gives a shit. Of course, the United States government isn't the only one who values profitable enterprise over sea life.

In Animal Planet's Mermaids: The New Evidence, they bring in a researcher from the Greenland area who was listening for marine life off the coast of Greenland, in preparation for sonar testing. Guess what they heard? A bloop - just like the marine biologists who were involved in Mermaids The Body Found last year. Upon further inspection, they actually SAW a mermaid!

Pretty freaky, right?

I know after watching the Animal Planet's Mermaid The Body Found that this was not actually real, but it was still amazing and fun to watch. I love fairy tales, and what better fairy tale than to think that mermaids might actually exist?

Before beginning his world famous circus, PT Barnum ran Barnum American Museum where he had curiosities, such as a Fiji mermaid. No one knows what happened to it, but it's said to have been a monkey torso sewn onto a fish tail. It probably looked something like this one...

Barnum found "A Real Mermaid" on display in a local traveling freak show. He bought it prior to the civil war to be unveiled about 20 years after the Fiji mermaid, but a horrible fire broke out at the museum and destroyed everything - except for a few photos.

Of course the photos looked exactly like the animated creations by the Animal Planet...

Even if you don't take it seriously, I recommend watching The Animal Planet's Mermaids: The Body Found and Mermaids: The New Evidence.

If for no other purpose - it's fun. 

All photos courtesy: TheAnimalPlanet.com.